Ben Whishaw

“I was going to begin with Jane Campion, who I worked with and who I adore. And recently I saw—well, not that recently, maybe two years ago, I saw one of her very first films, called Sweetie. This is so wild, you can hardly believe it’s happening. And it’s got something of, like, the real New Zealand, almost happening on another planet energy about it. Completely singular. And I love Jane, so that’s going in the bag.”

“This film is very beautiful: A Canterbury Tale. It has this beautiful line in it about how disappointing life is. It’s such a tender, sad film. I’m going to take that. This is one of Derek Jarman’s favorite films. He loved this film.”

“And do you have Derek Jarman at all? I have never seen this Derek Jarman film. I love Derek Jarman, great British director in the ’70s, ’80s, queer, somehow managed to make strange art-House films in Thatcher’s Britain. How on earth he managed it, I don’t know. So I’m going to take that, too. Derek Jarman. Total genius.”

“So, Ira, when we were making Peter Hujar’s Day, Ira Sachs would show me and Rebecca Hall… rarely the whole of films, but he’d go, 'Just look at this ten-minute sequence from a film and look at the images and look at the nature of the performances.' And it was a particular era of Godard filmmaking. Yes, King Lear. Not seen it. Seen a bit of it. But I’m going to take this so I can see what he was up to in the ’80s. Amazing guy.”

“L’humanité. This guy is extraordinary. Bruno Dumont. I mean, I don’t even know how to describe… They’re a bit like Bresson, but with a kind of more obvious, weird, dark humor. This film I’m obsessed with. He worked with a nonprofessional cast. It’s very disturbing, but also kind of, again, a sort of strange tenderness. L’humanité. Bruno Dumont. I’m going to take that. I want to see everything by him.”

“I’m also going to take this, by my friend John Cameron Mitchell, because he’s extraordinary. And I saw this too long ago and I need to see it again. Amazing director. Amazing human. Going to take that.”